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4. Warp Sizing
4.6 Drying Zone
This is the zone where the wet yarns are dried by evaporating the water from the size paste. The drying operation is very crucial because of the
following reasons.
1. It consumes most of the energy of sizing process
2. Inadequate drying will cause sticking of yarns with one another causing problem in weaving
3. Overdrying will make the size film brittle and therefore they may fall apart by minimum abrasion.
Drying is done by passing the warp sheet over large number of drying cylinders, coated with Teflon (poly tetra fluroethylene), arranged in sequential
manner. The number of drying cylinders can vary from 2 to 30 depending on the amount of water to be evaporated in unit time. In general, higher
speed of sizing would require more number of drying cylinders. The following expressions are useful for calculating the mass of water to be evaporated
during drying.
The first part of the expression yields wet pickup. If the mass of dry size is subtracted from the wet pickup then the amount of water to be evaporated
can be obtained. The above equation presumes that there is no residual moisture in the sized yarn after drying. However, for the running machine it is
more important to calculate the mass of water to be evaporated in unit time (minute). This will be depending on the following factors.
Sizing machine speed
Total number of yarns
Linear density of yarns ( tex)
Addon %
Concentration %
The mass of yarn passing through the machine per minute can be expressed as follows:
The result obtained from above expression has been depicted in Figure 4.28. For the same level of size addon, more water has to be evaporated if the
size paste concentration is low.
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Figure 4.28: Effect of addon% and concentration % on the amount of water evaporation
Methods of Drying
The methods of drying in sizing process can broadly be divided in two categories.
Conduction method
Convection method
In conduction method the warp sheet is passed over a metallic cylinder which is heated by using superheated steam. Heat exchange takes place
between the wet warp sheet and heated cylinders and in the process the warp sheet is dried ( Figure 4.29). The efficiency of this process is very high.
The problem of this system is that only one side of the warp sheet is exposed to the heated cylinder at a time. This problem can be overcome in
convection method. In convection method, hot air is circulated within an enclosed chamber and the warp sheet passes through the chamber with the
help of some guides (Figure 4.30). Both the sides of the warp sheet is exposed to the hot air at the same which ensures that the drying is very
uniform. However, the efficiency of the process is lower as compared to that of conduction process.
Figure 4.29: Conduction drying method
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Figure 4.30: Convection drying
Design of the drying zone can be of various types. To ensure better drying and reduction of load on individual cylinders, the wet warp sheet is often
splitted into multiple sheets. Each sheet is then dried by a separate group of drying cylinders (Figure 4.31). This initial drying is generally done at
relatively lower temperature. Finally all the sheets are again merged and final drying takes place using another set of drying rollers. The temperature
range for drying of cotton warp is 100140°C.
Figure 4.31: Two zone drying
Splitting
After drying, the warp sheet is splitted so that the yarns regain their individual identity before they are wound on the weaver’s beam. This is depicted in
Figure 4.32.
Figure 4.32: Splitting of warp sheet
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Splitting is required because warp sheet coming out of the drying section adhere to each other depending on the efficiency of the predrying section.
Lease rods which are often coated with chromium are used to split the warp sheet in a systematic manner as shown in Figures 4.33 and 4.34.
Figure 4.33 depicts a situation when each of the lease rods split the incoming warp sheet into two equal parts. On the other hand, Figure 4.34
presents a situation where warp sheet coming from a warper’s beam is separated at a time by a lease rod. So, if it is assumed that warp sheet is
originating from four warper’s beams placed on the creel, the first lease rod will split the warp sheet into two unequal parts. One part will have yarns
from a particular warper’s beam whereas the other part will consist of yarns form the remaining three warper’s beam.
Function of lease rods is to separate the individual yarns which are stuck together by dried size. During the splitting some amount of size film would be
dropped as waste. However, a large number of longer fibres, bridging two adjacent yarns would also get broken into smaller pieces. Therefore, splitting
is considered to have some beneficial effect from hairiness viewpoint. This has been represented pictorially in Figure 4.35.
Figure 4.33: Splitting of sized warp sheet into equal parts
Figure 4.34: Splitting of sized warp sheet into unequal parts
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Figure 4.35: Arrangement of hairs in yarns before and after splitting.
Beaming
After the splitting, the warp sheet is finally wound on the weaver’s beam. The warp sheet passes through an adjustable reed which can be expanded or
collapsed based on the width of the beam.
Prewetting of Yarns before Sizing
Prewetting is done for the staple spun yarns to make the sizing process more efficient. The warp sheet is passed through a box which contains hot
water (temperature around 90°C) and thus the waxes and other impurities are partially removed (Figure 4.36). This improves the adhesion between
the yarns and the size materials. If the sizing machine is having two size boxes then the first one can be used for the prewetting and the second one
for sizing. Generally, size boxes having two dip and two nip are preferred when prewetting is done. After prewetting, water occupies the core of the
yarns and thus the penetration of the size within the yarn structure reduces and uniform size film is formed over the yarn surface. High squeezing
pressure is used at the nip of prewetting box so that the water retained by the yarns is minimized. This precludes the possibility of dilution of paste
concentration in the size box as well as reduction of paste temperature. The advantages of prewetting are as follows:
Reduction of size ingredient consumption up to 50%
Increase in yarn strength
Reduction of yarn hairiness
Improvement of loom efficiency
Figure 4.36: Simplified representation of prewetting process
Quality Evaluation of Sized Yarns
The real performance of sized yarn can only be appraised during the weaving operation. However, the performance of sized yarns can be forecasted by
judging the following quality parameters:
Tenacity and breaking elongation of sized yarn
Cohesiveness and adhesion of the sized film
Abrasion resistance
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Fatigue resistance
Tensile strength (tenacity) enhancement after sizing does not exhibit good correlation with the actual warp breakage rate during weaving as tension
acting on yarn does not exceed 20% of the yarn breaking strength. Cohesiveness of size film is evaluated by measuring the tensile properties of a thin
film made from the size paste. A comparison of cohesive properties of maize starch, PVA and CMC films is given in Table 4.6.
Table 4.6: Properties of starch, CMC and PVA [Source: Reference number 2]
Size typ
Mechanical properties
Starch CMC PVA
2 3.52 3.33 4.03
Tenacity (cN/mm )
Elongation % 20.56 30.29 45.24
PVA demonstrates higher cohesiveness and elongation than Maize starch and CMC. Adhesive power indicates the compatibility of the size material with
the textile substrates.
If the adhesion between the fibres and size film is good then the slippage of the fibres in the sized roving during tensile testing will reduce. This will
increase the adhesive power. When adhesion is good, the critical adhesive power is attained at lower addon as shown in Figure 4.37 with solid line. In
contrast, if the adhesion power is bad, then higher addon is required to reach the level of critical adhesive power.
Figure 4.37: Size addon % vs adhesive power
During weaving, abrasion takes place between warp yarns and loom parts like heald eyes, reed and shuttle. Sized yarns can be subjected to abrasion
tests and the number of cycles required to break a given number of yarns is noted. These observations can be used to calculate the mean abrasion
cycle that can be resisted by a sized yarn. Alternatively, sized yarns can be subjected to a fixed number of abrasion cycles and then the % deterioration
in terms of tensile strength is calculated using the following expression. Lower deterioration implies good quality of sizing and vice versa.
During the weaving process, the yarn undergoes repeated extension and bending. This causes cumulative damage to the fibre and yarn structure. As a
result the yarn actually fails, due to fatigue, at a breaking load which is much lower than its actual breaking load. Even the very strong metal wires
break after repeated flexing due to poor fatigue resistance. SulzerRuti Webtester is used to evaluate the fatigue resistance of sized yarns. The
instrument simulates the actual weaving conditions.
References
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1. B. C. Goswami, R. D. Anandjiwala and D. Hall, Textile sizing, CRC Press, (2004).
2. S. Maatoug, N. Ladhari and F Sakli, Evaluation of weaveability of sized cotton warps, AUTEX Research Journal, 8 (2007) 239244.
3. P. K. Hari, B. K. Behera, J. Prakash, and K. Dhawan, High pressure squeezing in sizing: performance of cotton yarn, Textile Research Journal, 59
(1989) 597600.
4. A. Ormerod and W.S. Sondhelm, Weaving: Technology and Operations
5. P. K. Banerjee, Principles of fabric formation, CRC press, (2014).
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